Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Italian Drawings and Prints, 16th century

Baldassare PeruzziTwo studies for a chapel
ca. 1521-23drawing British Museum

Headlessnness

The term "headless" is also completely shared by Art and Philosophy. "Headless" does not mean stupid, silly, or without intelligence; "headless" does not mean being ignorant. I am not an ignorant artist – better not be ignorant, as an artist! ... I am and want to be a headless artist. I want to act – always – in headlessness; it's something important to me. I want to make Art in headlessness. "Headlessness" stands for doing my work in a rush and precipitously. Other words for headlessness are restlessness, insisting and insisting again heavily, acceleration, generosity, expenditure, energy (Energy = Yes! Quality = No!), self-transgression, blindness, and excess.–from Critical Laboratory : The Writings of Thomas Hirschhorn (MIT Press, 2013)

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

"My first initiation into the mysteries of the art was at the Orleans Gallery: it was there that I formed my taste, such as it is: so that I am irreclaimably of the old school of painting. I was staggered when I saw the works there collected and looked at them with wondering and longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight: the scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. . . . Old Time had unlocked her treasures, and Fame stood portress at the door. We had heard the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Carracci: – but to see them face to face, to be in the same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking some mighty spell – was almost an effect of necromancy."